Mark Curphey - SecurityBuddha.com

· … someone asks about your weekend plans and your answer consists of a list of Pri ones, twos, and threes.

· … you’ve ever ended a relationship using a PowerPoint presentation.

· … you shape your wedding plans around product releases.

· … you can use all of the features of PowerPoint.

· … you fail to associate ‘specs’ with ‘glasses’.

· … you write a post mortem about every major decision in your life.

· … you refer to your family and friends as “actors”.

· … you spend your evenings and weekends making tons of candy because you had to bribe the engineers complete their tasks on time.

· … you spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about how to rearrange the trash cans in the cafeteria to make the flow more efficient.

· … you end every discussion with “so what are the next steps?”.

· … when using a new website, you think this site would be a lot better if they just did ______.

· … you are the one proposing and planning that great last Spring Break trip to your friends.

· … you use Excel spreadsheets and random column sorting to choose your newborn child’s name.

· … you use the term “ask” as a noun.

· … you have a 5 phase plan for your Saturday night date.

· … you’re adept at using rules to manage massive low-pri e-mail threads.

· … you tell your wife/husband/partner that you simply can’t “grok” what he/she’s saying.

· … you talked about the dogfood you ate yesterday to your girl friend at dinner.

· … you know how many cycles you have available to do something.

· … you set KPIs as part of a marriage proposal or acceptance.

· … you conduct a post–mortem and it does not involve dead bodies.

· … you’re wondering if there’s a process you can introduce to tame this e-mail beast.

· … you’ve been called “bossy” by more than one person.

· … you’re constantly clarifying the difference between a risk and an issue.

· … you ask your wife/husband/partner for their plan (when building your garden box).

· … upon hearing a mere suggestion, you respond with “that’s a great idea, can I assign that action item to you?”.

· … you’re sending out status reports on everything you do, to your stakeholders – including your spouse, you are a lifetime PM.

· … you plan your life with a detailed Project file… and it never reflects your real life.

· … you go to a meeting and start with “I don’t have much to say today” and then keep speaking for an hour.

· … you use the words orthogonal, oarp, triage, long pole, milestone, or grok in daily conversation (and all in the same day).

· … you use more three letter acronyms than actual words.

· … you answer email after everyone else goes to bed.

· … you answer email before anyone gets up.

· … you complete a spec, review 5 others, triage dozens of bugs, plan a hotfix release, send status reports, schedule two meetings, drive two other meetings, and attend a customer conference call – before lunch.

· … while ending a domestic phone conversation, you summarize the conversation and state the open points… Everyone in your house gives you a meaningful look and talk in whispers after you leave the room and giggle.

· … you tend to identify the risks in everything you do and then start looking for workarounds/mitigations.

· … if at every review cycle you KNOW there will be negative feedback from someone you irked for having to bird-dog them, and … if you learn to appreciate the description of you as “too direct”.

· … break out in sweat when your spousal unit does not calculate the most efficient route for the weekend errands.

· … you calculate the critical path for your weekend errands.

· … if you actually know how to herd cats.

· … if you buy a Karaoke machine and have 300+ songs organized in a pivot that you print & give to your guests at your spouse’s birthday the following Saturday night.

· … if your wife is pregnant, you prepare a project plan with the doctor and hold him accountable is she is not tracking as per plan.

· … if you talk to dev like a dev and talk to test like a test.